Speaking Out of Place

This August, the Asian American Literary Festival was to take place in Washington, DC.. The event had already garnered substantial investments and expectations from both national and international groups and states. Thus there was considerable shock and outrage when Acting Director Yao-Fen You abruptly cancelled the entire festival, without a word of explanation.The Washington Post and other sources have hinted that it might be because of potentially controversial content.  The Post wrote: "According to emails shared with The Post, You notified Lawrence-Minh Bui Davis, the festival’s director since its founding in 2017 and a curator at the Smithsonian that “due to the current political climate,” Smithsonian leadership had requested that all upcoming exhibitions and multiday programs be reviewed under a policy known as Smithsonian Directive 603, which is meant to help identify any potentially sensitive or controversial content and prepare for potential responses from the public."On today’s show we speak with Ching-In Chen, a poet who was curating a festival event featuring books by trans and nonbinary writers, and Kate Hao, a program coordinator on contract with the Smithsonian for the festival, about the controversy, and about the issues it raises about art for the community vs. art that must conform to state institutional preferences and politics. We discuss why this festival is absolutely essential for the present day, where we have Asian Americans being used to help dismantle affirmative action, and where we see persistent and deadly acts of anti-Asian violence.We also hear about possible plans to go forward without the Smithsonian, and ways we can help support the artists and organizers.Acting Director You declined to comment for this show.Descended from ocean dwellers, Ching-In Chen is a genderqueer Chinese American writer, community organizer and teacher. They are author of The Heart's Traffic: a novel in poems (Arktoi Books/Red Hen Press, 2009) and recombinant (Kelsey Street Press, 2018 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry) as well as chapbooks to make black paper sing (speCt! Books) and Kundiman for Kin :: Information Retrieval for Monsters (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, Leslie Scalapino Finalist). Chen is co-editor of The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities (South End Press, 1st edition; AK Press, 2nd edition) and currently a core member of the Massage Parlor Outreach Project as well as a Kelsey Street Press collective member. They have received fellowships from Kundiman, Lambda, Watering Hole, Can Serrat, Imagining America, Jack Straw Cultural Center and the Intercultural Leadership Institute as well as the Judith A. Markowitz Award for Exceptional New LGBTQ Writers. They are currently collaborating with Cassie Mira and others on Breathing in a Time of Disaster, a performance, installation and speculative writing project exploring breath through meditation, health and environmental justice. They teach in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences and the MFA program in Creative Writing and Poetics at University of Washington Bothell and serve as Writer in Residence at Hugo House. www.chinginchen.comKate Hao is a poet and fiction writer, a cultural worker, a shy Leo, an ex-pianist, a soup enthusiast, an aspiring morning person. She grew up in the suburbs of northern Virginia and currently calls Providence, Rhode Island home.

Today we talk with Cynthia Franklin about her new book, Narrating Humanity: Life Writing and Movement Politics from Palestine to Mauna Kea. Taking on pivotal historical moments like the murder of George Floyd and the emergence of #BlackLivesMatter, the on-going struggle of the Palestinian people against the ethno-nationalist Zionist state, and the fight for Indigenous rights in Hawai’i, Franklin asks the question, what requirements to people have to meet in order to fit into the human narrative?  And what are the possibilities of creating alternate stories of the human that can accommodate individuals who identify more as members of political collectives, and also narratives that exceed the normative category of the human? This powerful book asks fundamental questions about the relationship between art and activism.Cynthia G. Franklin is Professor of English at the University of Hawai'i, and coeditor of the journal Biography. She is the author of Narrating Humanity: Life Writing and Movement Politics from Palestine to Mauna Kea (2023), Academic Lives: Memoir, Cultural Theory and the University Today and Writing Women’s Communities: The Politics and Poetics of Contemporary Multi-Genre Anthologies. She has coedited special issues of Biography including “Life in Occupied Palestine” and “Personal Effects: The Testimonial Uses of Life Writing.” For the past ten years, Cynthia has been on the Organizing Collective of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI) and she is a founding member and faculty advisor of Students and Faculty for Justice in Palestine at UH (SFJP@UH). She serves on the Editorial Collective for the newly established initiative EtCH (Essays in the Critical Humanities).

In today’s episode of Speaking Out of Place we speak with Dr Jennifer Gomez about her new book, The Cultural Betrayal of Black Women and Girls: A Black Feminist Approach to Healing from Sexual Abuse, which takes on the particular difficulty of centering the voices and experiences of Black women and girls when confronting sexual violence in the Black community.In her foreword the book, Thema Bryant, President of the American Psychological Association writes, This important work … is a love song to the survival of black sis and trans women and girls. For love to be liberating it must see and affirm survivors holistically. Gomez calls psychologists and other mental health providers to adopt courageous compassion, which means sharing concern and outrage at the realities of sexual violence as well as concern and outrage for the injustices that contextualize the trauma and recovery process for black women and girls. In our conversation Dr. Gomez explains how she fought to reconcile the need for solidarity in the Black community with the demand that the abuse of Black women and girls be confronted and healed. Alongside this struggle was her effort to change the ways psychologists and others silence these traumas.Jennifer M. Gómez is an Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work and a Faculty Affiliate at the Center for Innovation in Social Work & Health at Boston University, and a Board Member and Chair of the Research Advisory Committee at the Center for Institutional Courage. Her primary research focus is cultural betrayal trauma theory (CBTT), which she created as a framework for understanding the mental, behavioral, cultural, and physical health impact of violence on Black and other marginalized youth, young adults, and elders within the context of inequality.Written while she was a 2021-22 Fellow at the Stanford University Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS), her book, “The Cultural Betrayal of Black Women & Girls: A Black Feminist Approach to Healing from Sexual Abuse” (American Psychological Association; 2023), provides individual, interpersonal, and structural strategies for healing. Website: https://jmgomez.org ; Book Website: https://www.apa.org/pubs/books/cultural-betrayal/; Twitter: @JenniferMGmez1   

On today’s episode of Speaking Out of Place we talk with Olivia Harrison, author of a new book entitled, Natives Against Nativism: Antiracism and Indigenous Critique in Postcolonial France, which takes on the appropriation of the figure of the “native” to serve progressive and indeed revolutionary causes, but also its appropriation by the alt-right both in France and internationally to drive a reactionary program against so-called anti-white racism.Our conversation covers a lot of ground, from a discussion of the basic premises of the French Republic, to unpacking the long history of anti-racist struggles in France, to the period of the late 1960s and 1970s, where we see in particular the figure of the Palestinian, and of the American Indian, play enormous roles in the radical imaginary.We then turn to the ways things like the “Great Replacement Theory” signal a convergence of US and French anti-right “nativism,” and use photographs, films, and poetry to show the complexity of this terrain, perhaps best illustrated by the collaboration between French avant-garde film maker Jean-Luc Godard and the pre-eminent Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish.Olivia C. Harrison is Associate Professor of French and Comparative Literature at the University of Southern California. Her research focuses on postcolonial North African, Middle Eastern, and French literature and film, with a particular emphasis on transcolonial affiliations between writers and intellectuals from the Global South. Her publications include Natives against Nativism: Antiracism and Indigenous Critique in Postcolonial France (University of Minnesota Press, 2023), Transcolonial Maghreb: Imagining Palestine in the Era of Decolonization (Stanford University Press, 2016), and essays on Maghrebi literature, Beur and banlieue cultural production, and postcolonial theory. With Teresa Villa-Ignacio, she is the editor of Souffles-Anfas: A Critical Anthology from the Moroccan Journal of Culture and Politics (Stanford University Press, 2016) and translator of Hocine Tandjaoui’s proem, Clamor/Clameur (Litmus Press, 2021). 

Dr. Haley Duschinski and Mr. Imraan Mir discuss the struggle in Kashmir, highlighting India's oppressive occupation, propaganda tactics, and global perspectives. They address resource exploitation, state terrorism labeling, and the call for international solidarity with Kashmiri people.

In November 20, 2015, a resolution presented to the members of the American Anthropological Association for a boycott of Israeli institutions narrowly missed adoption (2,384 in favor and 2,423 opposed; 49.6% - 50.4%). Responding to the new petition members submitted on March 3, the American Anthropological Association has scheduled a vote on the boycott of Israeli academic institutions from June 15-July 14. In this episode of Speaking Out of Place we talk with two of the main scholar-activists involved in the campaign, who tell us why the American Anthropological Association must follow other academic organizations such as the American Studies Association in answering the call from Palestinian civil society for a boycott of Israeli institutions.Nadia Abu El-Haj is Ann Whitney Olin Professor in the Departments of Anthropology at Barnard College and Columbia University, Co-Director of the Center for Palestine Studies, and Chair of the Governing Board of the Society of Fellows/Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University. She also serves as Vice President and Vice Chair of the Board at The Institute for Palestine Studies in Washington DC. The recipient of numerous awards, including from the Social Science Research Council, the Wenner Gren Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Harvard Academy for Area and International Studies, the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, and the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, she is the author of numerous journal articles published on topics ranging from the history of archaeology in Palestine to the question of race and genomics today. Sami Hermez is director of the Liberal Arts Program and Associate Professor in residence of anthropology at Northwestern University in Qatar.  His forthcoming book will be released in February 2024 with Stanford University Press titled, My Brother, My Land: A Story From Palestine, which is a creative nonfiction that chronicles the life of a Palestinian family living through ongoing Israeli occupation and dispossession. His first book published with Penn Press, War is Coming: Between Past and Future Violence in Lebanon (2017), focused on the everyday life of political violence in Lebanon and how people recollect and anticipate this violence. He obtained his doctorate degree from the Department of Anthropology at Princeton University.  

In today’s episode of “Speaking Out of Place” we talk with Professor Adam Aron, author of the book, “The Climate Crisis: Science, Impacts, Policy, Psychology, Justice, Social Movements.”As the title of the book indicates, it is a systematic and thorough discussion of not simply the Climate Crisis, but also, and very importantly, all the key elements we need to know about to do effective activism to save our planet.I speak with Adam first about the fact that science has shown that we are at a tipping point in the climate crisis—a point of no return.  After that, we explore the psychological responses to that science, and how we might work toward changing our individual, collective, national, and international behaviors and actions to address the accelerating climate crisis.Adam is a Professor in the Psychology Dept at UC San Diego. His research and teaching focus on the social science of collective action on the climate crisis. His climate activism has been through the Green New Deal at UC San Diego where he has worked on several campaigns such as fossil fuel divestment and also campus decarbonization via ElectrifyUC and he has also produced the documentary Coming Clean. Before switching to the climate crisis, Adam had a successful career in cognitive neuroscience. He earned his PhD from the University of Cambridge, and was a postdoctoral fellow at UCLA.

In this episode of Speaking Out of Place we talk with Ashley Dawson about his new co-edited book, Decolonize Conservation: Global Voices for Indigenous Self-Determination, Land, and a World in Common, an anthology of essays by Indigenous activists from the Global South arguing against “fortress conservation” and “protected areas” whose existence is predicated on displacing indigenous peoples, and false claims about the expected benefits of such violence. They argue: It’s not all humans who are destroying “nature”; it’s one particular way of life and ideology. In reality, we are part of nature and must stop pretending we are separate. This is a human crisis and not only a climate or environmental one. Protecting nature must come to be seen as a vital aspect of this wider issue—how to live and create a world in which a healthy and decent life.”This episode is part of a new collaboration between Speaking Out of Place and The Creative Process, a Paris-based project that brings issues of art, culture, and politics to a world audience. We are excited by this partnership, and grateful to The Creative Process for producing this episode and sharing it through its global channels.Ashley Dawson is Professor of English at the Graduate Center / City University of New York and the College of Staten Island. Recently published books of his focus on key topics in the Environmental Humanities, and include People’s Power: Reclaiming the Energy Commons (O/R, 2020), Extreme Cities: The Peril and Promise of Urban Life in the Age of Climate Change (Verso, 2017), and Extinction: A Radical History (O/R, 2016). Dawson is the author of a forthcoming book entitled Environmentalism from Below (Haymarket) and the co-editor of Decolonize Conservation! (Common Notions, 2023). 

On today's episode of Speaking Out of Place, we speak with Naomi Oreskes, who is Henry Charles Lea professor of the History of Science and affiliated Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University. She is a world-renown earth scientist, historian, and public speaker. Oreskes is a leading voice in the role of science in society, the reality of anthropogenic climate change, and the role of disinformation in blocking climate action.In 2010, she and her co-author Eric Conway, published Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Climate Change, where they identified something called the “tobacco strategy” that became paradigmatic in terms of corporate efforts to debunk science.This discovery led them to explore more deeply and more broadly the attack on science. They found that as science was demoted, the idea of market fundamentalism or the "magic of the market" became a mantra that covered up corporate malfeasance and killed progressive governmental policies that constrained capitalism and benefitted people and the environment.In today's program we discuss Oreskes’ and Conway's new book, the Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe the Government and Love the Free Market.

On today’s episode of Speaking Out of Place, we talk with Professor J. Kēhaulani Kauanui and Professor Sunaina Maira, two people involved in the 2013 effort to get the American Studies Association in support for the academic boycott of Israeli academic institutions, called for by Palestinian civil society groups in 2004. Both Kauanui and Maira were named defendants in a lawsuit brought by pro-Israel members of the ASA. Recently, the court has exonerated the defendants of all charges. We hear about the lawsuit, and the organizing by scholars in the ASA and in the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI) that led to the historic boycott resolution, the first by a major US academic association. We spend a great deal of the program talking about the significance of the struggle in solidarity with Palestinian academics and students, and the meaning of this legal victory.J. Kēhaulani Kauanui is Professor of American Studies and affiliate faculty in Anthropology at Wesleyan University, where she teaches courses in critical Indigenous studies, settler colonial studies, critical race studies, and anarchist studies. She is the author of Hawaiian Blood: Colonialism and the Politics of Sovereignty and Indigeneity (Duke University Press 2008); Paradoxes of Hawaiian Sovereignty: Land, Sex, and the Colonial Politics of State Nationalism (Duke University Press 2018); and editor of Speaking of Indigenous Politics: Conversations with Activists, Scholars, and Tribal Leaders (University of Minnesota Press 2018). Kauanui is one of the six co-founders of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association. And she is the recipient of the Western History Association’s 2022 American Indian History Lifetime Achievement Award. Sunaina Maira is Professor of Asian American Studies at UC Davis and a founding organizer of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI). She does research in Arab and South Asian American studies and is the author of several books related to the Palestine justice movement such as The 9/11 Generation: Youth, Rights, and Solidarity in the War on Terror and Boycott!: The Academy and Justice for Palestine. Her book based on ethnographic research in Palestine is Jil [Generation] Oslo: Palestinian Hip Hop, Youth Culture, and the Youth Movement. Maira launched a section on West Asian American Studies in the Association for Asian American Studies has been faculty advisor of SJP and organizer with Faculty for Justice in Palestine.